Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is based largely through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy. Kesey explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity, ideas that were widely discussed at the time about psychiatric hospitals. The book is narrated by “Chief” Bromden, a gigantic and half- Native American patient who is thought to be deaf and mute. Bromden focuses on the antics of the rebellious Randle McMurphy, who is out to manipulate the system to his advantages. The head nurse, Mildred Ratched who is known as “Big Nurse” or “Nurse Ratched” by her patients; rules the ward with an iron fist and with little medical oversight. From the beginning McMurphy constantly antagonizes Nurse Ratched and upsets the routines, leading to constant power struggle between the patient and the nurse. Through out the book Ken Kesey uses Randle McMurphy to represent the hero in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Throughout the ward there is a dark gloomy feeling that Kesey presents. All the patients are scared and frightened by Nurse Ratched “who enters the ward with a gust of cold”(Kesey10). Nurse Ratched runs her ward on a strict schedule, controlling every movement with absolute precision and an iron fist. She has little medical oversight but likes to use electroshock therapy and even brain surgery. Chief Bromden goes into detail and explains her features and characteristics. “Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh-colored enamel, blend of white and everything working together except the color on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what...
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...figure. He took the patients on a fishing trip, like Jesus and his twelve disciples, to test their faith in him and his rebellious methods. Also when McMurphy is taken to get electroshock treatment, he lies down voluntarily on the cross shaped table and asks, “will I get my crown of thorns” (Kesey, 262)? Randle McMurphy makes the ultimate sacrifice when Ratched tries to undo everything they worked for. He sacrifices his own hopes of getting out of the ward when he attacked her. Ripping her uniform to reveal her femininity, showing that she was not an all power machine but a cruel woman who manipulated people so she could have power. His courageous act indeed destroyed Ratched’s power, although he dies in the end from Bromden suffocating him with a pillow, McMurphy goes down as the hero in this novel for his courageous acts to give the ward a voice of their own.
Randle McMurphy is in a constant battle within himself, he is portrayed as a sociopath. He does not base his actions off of whether they will affect those around him, instead does as he pleases. His actions are based off of what is best for himself. McMurphy was first introduced as a savior to the ward, He soon uses the patients for his own benefit, the patients look up to him as one of their new proclaimed leader. McMurphy inspires hope into them and make them want to stand up for themselves. This give
The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey tells a story of Nurse Ratched, the head nurse of a mental institution, and the way her patients respond to her harsh treatment. The story is told from the perspective of a large, Native-American patient named Bromden; he immediately introduces Randle McMurphy, a recently admitted patient, who is disturbed by the controlling and abusive way Ratched runs her ward. Through these feelings, McMurphy makes it his goal to undermine Ratched’s authority, while convincing the other patients to do the same. McMurphy becomes a symbol of rebellion through talking behind Ratched’s back, illegally playing cards, calling for votes, and leaving the ward for a fishing trip. His shenanigans cause his identity to be completely stolen through a lobotomy that puts him in a vegetative state. Bromden sees McMurphy in this condition and decides that the patients need to remember him as a symbol of individuality, not as a husk of a man destroyed by the
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...
Nurse Ratched is portrayed as the authority figure in the hospital. The patients see no choice but to follow her regulations that she had laid down for them. Nurse Ratched's appearance is strong and cold. She has womanly features, but hides them “Her Face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive… A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing putting those big, womanly breasts on what would have otherwise been a prefect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.” (11) She kept control over the ward without weakness, until McMurphy came. When McMurphy is introduced into the novel he is laughing a lot, and talking with the patients in the ward, he does not seem intimidated by Miss Ratched. McMurphy constantly challenges the control of Nurse Ratched, while she tries to show she remains in control, He succeeds in some ways and lo...
McMurphy is shown as a martyr like Jesus was because the patients really don’t become free until he dies. Before the treatment is administered to him McMurphy “climbs on the table without help and spreads his arms out to hit the shadow. A switch snaps the clasps on his wrists, ankles, clamping him into the shadow” (Kesey pg. 272) When the graphite salve is put on his temples and they tell him its a conductant he says “Anointest my head with conductant.
Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with popular culture symbolism of the 1960s. This strategy helps paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Music and cartoons of the times are often referred to in the novel. These help to exaggerate the characters and the state of the mental institution.
This also demonstrates how much power McMurphy has gained so far over Ms. Ratched. In the novel, Ms. Ratched tries to take away all of the power that McMurphy has gained over her by blaming McMurphy for making the lives of the hospital patients worse, and that McMurphy was the cause for the deaths of patients William Bibbit and Charles Cheswick. This angers McMurphy, and causes him to choke her with the intent to kill her, in the novel, Chief Bromden describes, “Only at the last---after he’d smashed through that glass door, her face swung around, with terror forever ruining any other look she might ever try to use again, screaming when he grabbed her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front.
In Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author refers to the many struggles people individually face in life. Through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, the novel explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity. With these themes, Kesey makes various points which help us understand which situations of repression can lead an individual to insanity. These points include: the effects of sexual repression, woman as castrators, and the pressures we face from society to conform. Through these points, Kesey encourages the reader to consider that people react differently in the face of repression, and makes the reader realize the value of alternative states of perception, rather than simply writing them off as "crazy."
One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a movie that portrays a life story of a criminal named McMurphy who is sent to a mental institution because he believes that he himself is insane. While McMurphy is in the mental ward, he encounters other patients and changes their perception of the “real” world. Before McMurphy came to the mental ward, it was a place filled with strict rules and orders that patients had to follow; these rules were created by the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. However, once McMurphy was in the ward, everything, including the atmosphere, changed. He was the first patient to disobey Nurse Ratched. Unlike other patients who continuously obeyed Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and another patient named Charlie Cheswick decided to rebel
The dominant discourse of conformity is characterised predominantly by influencing to obey rules described by Kesey’ novel ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. At the start of the novel, all the acute and the silence chronic conform to Nurse Ratched’s rules before the arrival of McMurphy. Since, she was in complete control over the ward until McMurphy arrived. After he arrived, he begins to take control of the patients. He begins to take the role of leader, a leader that was unexpected. Kesey has foregrounded the character, McMurphy to be different thus creating a binary opposite that is represented in the novel. Kesey shows the binary opposites as being good versus evil. The former represents the con man McMurphy, and the latter represents the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. An example of this would be, “She’s carrying her wicker bag…a bag shape of a tool box with a hemp handle…” (pg.4), showing that Nurse Ratched is a mechanic. McMurphy is portrayed as being a good character by revitalising the hope of the patients by strangling Nurse Ratched. This revitalise the hope for the pa...
Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, is a novel containing the theme of emotions being played with in order to confine and change people. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is about a mental institution where a Nurse named Miss Ratched has total control over its patients. She uses her knowledge of the patients to strike fear in their minds. Chief Bromden a chronic who suffers from schizophrenia and pretends to be deaf and mute narrates the novel. From his perspective we see the rise and fall of a newly admitted patient, RP McMurphy. McMurphy used his knowledge and courage to bring changes in the ward. During his time period in the ward he sought to end the reign of the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched, also to bring the patients back on their feet. McMurphy issue with the ward and the patients on the ward can be better understood when you look at this novel through a psychoanalytic lens. By applying Daniel Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence to McMurphy’s views, it is can be seen that his ideas can bring change in the patients and they can use their
In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, R.P. McMurphy is not a typical patient stuck in a ward. In fact, McMurphy is one idiosyncratic patient that no one in the ward has ever encountered. But throughout the book, he becomes an innate leader and a “martyr” for the other patients in the book, much like Christ in the Bible. Christ is an intended symbol that the author, Ken Kesey, uses in this book. McMurphy acts like Christ in the book—a model and leader for his disciples, the other patients. He tries to free the other patients from Nurse Ratched, the psychotic, inhumane leader of them all. He “fights” Nurse Ratched by becoming a leader for the other patients so that they may have hope that they can make it out of this ward still sane, despite what Nurse Ratched has done to them to brainwash them into believing that she is a good, caring leader who can be trusted. It is right in that case to associate him with a powerful, and worshipped leader such as Christ. However, McMurphy is not a Christ-figure due to his violent, sexual and seemingly amoral behavior throughout the book, despite all the things that make him seem worthy to be compared to Christ. Christ is a sinless, holy being. That one detail may seem insignificant to some, but it is actually the stripped down reason, the core reason, why McMurphy is not like Christ. McMurphy’s weakness to gamble excessively, his want to rebel without reason, and his desire to do risqué behavior, sins which he commits, conclude that McMurphy is not a figure similar to Christ.
“Power comes from temperament but enthusiasm kills the switch”. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken kesey reveals how the struggle for power and authority is shown in the psychiatric hospital. Ken kesey expresses this mastery through Nurse Ratched and McMurphy and their effect on the patients in the ward. Nurse Ratched has all the power due to her technically being in charge of the ward. The patients “men” are powerless with their acceptance and obedience to her actions. However, everything changes when McMurphy arrives. His confidence and charisma give him some type of power that challenges and disrupts the Nurse’s drunkening thirst for power. Power in this novel is lost, gained and repossessed.
By bringing in McMurphy, readers can see how truly changing the concept of power can be, but also show that power does not have to be evil and bad. McMurphy’s influence of the patients on the fishing trip shows that good power even has the capabilities of changing the lives of people. On the other hand, Nurse Ratched is also a symbol of power, but the power instilled by Nurse Ratched is very menacing and dark. An example of her power is when she “turns on the fog machine”. Nurse and her assistants are shown instilling their power like during moments “They’re at the fog machine again but they haven’t
The author of One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest, allows the reader to explore different psychoanalytic issues in literature. The ability to use works literature to learn about real world conflicts allows us to use prior knowledge to interact with these problems in reality. Ken Kesey, the author of the above novel and Carl Jung, author of “The Archetype and the Collective Unconscious” wrote how the mind can be easily overtaken by many outside factors from the past or present. The novel takes place in an asylum that is aimed to contain individuals that have a mental issue or problem. The doctors and care takers are seen as tyrants and barriers that inhibit the patients to improve their health, while the patients are limited by their initial conditions